Election officials across the nation are taking to the airwaves and interwebs to scream “HELP WANTED!” before the November 2016 election. Click on your state to find appropriate contact information for your local elections office. Then, tell them that you’re ready to volunteer!

Sweet, sweet six-years-in-the-making victory – that’s what it felt like as we saw the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia hand down a judgment in favor of True the Vote that returns our case to trial and discovery. What did we win? A new day in court to consider our First Amendment harms suffered at the hands of the IRS. When do we get it? The clock will likely start next week. TTV Founder Catherine Engelbrecht responded to this historic ruling in a press release:

“We are now closer than we've ever been to revealing the collusions and cover-ups used in the weaponization of the IRS against the American People. This lawsuit has been a struggle every step of the way, but it’s a battle that must be fought. When a rogue government sets out to silence its citizens and deny them their Constitutional rights, we all suffer for it. No one should be subjected to what True the Vote was made to endure. Today our fight continues on behalf of all Americans.”

Engelbrecht also appeared on Fox News August 8 to react to the ruling:

If you’d like to read a ‘greatest-hits selection’ from the court decision, click here.

Schedule a TTV speaker today!

Just in time for the height of the 2016 Election, True the Vote has fanned out staff and speakers around the southern and southeastern United States -- with more to come. Do you have a meeting or conference coming up and would like to book a speaker on the subject of election integrity? We’ve streamlined the request process with a form now available on the website, here. We can’t wait to attend your next event!

Wisconsin is #Winning the voter ID fight

Just when the leftist media-narrative curators thought they had convinced the nation that voter ID was on the ropes, Wisconsin had to go and ruin it. An order allowing Badger-state voters to vote anyway after claiming they did not have ID was stayed by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. It also offered a grim prediction of how the litigation will continue for anti-ID agitators.

TTV Advisory Board Member Hans von Spakovsky summed it up in the National Review this week: “As the three-judge panel, led by Judge Frank Easterbrook, says in the stay order, the Seventh Circuit had ‘concluded that anyone who is eligible to vote in Wisconsin, but cannot obtain a qualifying photo ID with reasonable effort, is entitled to an accommodation that will permit him or her to cast a ballot.’ But Judge Adelman, on remand of the case to his court by the Seventh Circuit, ‘instead of attempting to identify those voters, or to identify the kinds of situations in which the state’s procedures fall short,’ instead ‘issued an injunction that permits any registered voter to declare by affidavit that reasonable effort would not produce a photo ID — even if the voter has never tried to secure one, and even if by objective standards the effort needed would be reasonable (and would succeed).’ You can read the rest of the article, here.

Remember to bring your ID to the polls, Badgers.

What can you do now?

Feeling a little overwhelmed? Are you unsure of how to start fighting back? Again, TTV has important resources available to help you, and we know how to put you to work.

Online Training: If you haven’t signed up with the TTV Knowledge Network for poll watcher training, today is a good day to do it. It’s free, easy and available right now. What are you waiting for?

Tell your local election officials you want to help: Your local polling place is probably a man short and still needing help. Contact your local official now and tell them that you want to work in the polls!

Keep the online conversation going: The stretch between conventions and the election gets pretty hot online, and misinformation will undoubtedly be widespread. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and help us spread the TTV message. You can follow our election news blog here and share links within your network. Do you see someone trolling @TrueTheVote online? Push back!

Did you know? PEW Research highlighted a study that detailed the total amount it would cost to collect ALL voter files in the country. True the Vote’s national voter roll research databank costs $126,482 -- just for the raw data! If you haven’t yet, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to help underwrite our research efforts.

Common sense from the Seventh Circuit, and a win for honest elections in Wisconsin: The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay Wednesday of U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman’s order that struck down parts of Wisconsin’s Voter ID law last month, also indicating the lower court decision will likely be overturned… […]

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory will ask the U.S. Supreme Court this week to stay the Fourth Circuit’s decision to strike down the state’s photo voter ID law and other election integrity reforms ahead of the November general election, after the Fourth Circuit turned down the state’s request for a stay on Thursday.

“Changing our state’s election laws close to the upcoming election, including common sense voter ID, will create confusion for voters and poll workers,” the governor said in a statement. “The court should have stayed their ruling, which is legally flawed, factually wrong and disparaging to our state.”

HOUSTON, TX. – August 5, 2016:True the Vote (TTV), the nation's leading voters’ rights and election integrity organization, today praised the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia’s ruling in True the Vote v. IRS, reversing key rulings against the organization’s prior claims and remanding the case back to trial.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia originally dismissed True the Vote’s lawsuit after finding that IRS targeting had fully ceased, therefore mooting TTV’s civil rights claims based on assurances of internal reform from the tax agency. The appellate court panel reversed that finding in scathing detail:

“It being plain to the Inspector General, the district court, and this court that the IRS cannot defend its discriminatory conduct on the merits, the governing issue is now whether the controversy is moot. The district court held that it was; we conclude that it is not.”

The difference between a ceased discriminatory scheme versus a ‘restive’ one:

“There is a difference between the controversy having gone away, and simply being in a restive stage. This difference gives rise to the concept of ‘voluntary cessation.’ That concept governs the case in which the defendant actor is not committing the controversial conduct at the moment of the litigation, but ‘the defendant is ‘free to return to [its] old ways’—thereby subjecting the plaintiff to the same harm but, at the same time, avoiding judicial review … Here, voluntary cessation has never occurred.”

The ‘absurd’ belief that IRS has ceased its targeting of pro-liberty groups:

“It is absurd to suggest that the effect of the IRS’s unlawful conduct, which delayed the processing of appellant-plaintiffs’ applications, has been eradicated when two of the appellant-plaintiffs’ applications remain pending.”

On the dangers of letting the IRS skate based on a promise it has changed its ways:

“A violation of right that is ‘suspended until further notice’ has not become the subject of voluntary cessation, with no reasonable expectation of resumption, so as to moot litigation against the violation of rights. Rather, it has at most advised the victim of the violation –‘you’re alright for now, but there may be another shoe falling’.”

True the Vote welcomed the ruling as a positive step toward justice after its First Amendment rights were violated by the IRS, dating back to 2010.

“Today's ruling is a tremendous victory for True the Vote. We are now closer than we've ever been to revealing the collusions and cover-ups used in the weaponization of the IRS against the American People,”True the Vote Founder Catherine Engelbrecht said. “This lawsuit has been a struggle every step of the way, but is a battle that must be fought. When a rogue government sets out to silence its citizens and deny them their Constitutional rights, we all suffer for it. No one should be subjected to what True the Vote was made to endure. Today our fight continues on behalf of all Americans.”

The appellate ruling will leave seven days to pass before being sent back to the trial court – should the IRS wish to appeal to the full circuit for an en banc hearing.

True the Vote (TTV) is an IRS-designated 501(c)(3) voters’ rights organization, founded to inspire and equip voters for involvement at every stage of our electoral process. TTV empowers organizations and individuals across the nation to actively protect the rights of legitimate voters, regardless of their political party affiliation. For more information, please visit www.truethevote.org.

While other Democrat-backed lawsuits have mostly focused on fighting states’ voter ID laws, in Ohio they have sought to block voter roll cleanup efforts; eliminate laws requiring full and accurate completion of absentee- and provisional-ballot forms; and bring back the state’s “Golden Week,” an extra seven days of early voting starting 35 days before Election Day during which people can register and vote on the same day – positions favored by the Left that accommodate fraud.

“What happens in Ohio is we see people come from other states such as California and Massachusetts where they know their vote doesn’t matter, and exploit the loopholes…

“There is a reason Democrats were cheering [convicted eight-time fraudulent voter] Melowese Richardson after she was released from jail,” said Adams, a former Justice Department attorney. “It’s because they care about power and are happy to let voter fraud continue in Ohio to gain power.”

A spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted noted that many states have stricter voting laws than Ohio, but “lawsuits aren’t popping up there.”

“New York, for example, the home state of the Democrat and Republican nominees, has only one-day voting. It’s called Election Day. Litigation always happens prior to an election here because this is a swing state with a big electoral presence.”

The real threat is that recent federal court rulings against multiple states’ common-sense voter ID laws “twist the Voting Rights Act from a law intended to stop racial discrimination into one that transfers the power to determine routine election procedures—which the Constitution delegates to the states—to the judiciary.”

What Judge Jones said in the Texas case applies to all of these decisions: They move “us another step down the road of judicial supremacy by potentially subjecting virtually every voter regulation to litigation in federal court.” This is a road where purposeful racial discrimination “can be ‘inferred’ even without a shred” of evidence. They are prime examples of “unauthorized and extra-legislative transfers of power to the judiciary” that “disable the working of the democratic process.” And harm the security and integrity of the election process.

The Republican attorney general’s action Monday came in the wake of a ruling last month by a federal judge in Milwaukee that pared back the photo ID law by allowing voters without identification to cast ballots by swearing to their identity.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee created a pathway for voters with difficulties getting IDs who have been unable to cast ballots under the state’s 2011 voter ID law.

But as Schimel noted, all the plaintiffs “fall outside the class” of voters who don’t have or can’t with reasonable effort get IDs, “which is fatal to their case.”

Schimel argued that the injunction will cause voter confusion and require “that the State expend substantial resources to implement and publicize a procedure that encourages violations of the law.”